FROM JOSEPH FARAH'S G2 BULLETIN

Putin may have found pretext to seize Ukraine

Tied to U.S. backing of unsavory demonstrators

F. Michael Maloof, senior staff writer for national security affairs for WND and G2Bulletin, is a former senior security policy analyst in the office of the secretary of defense, and is author of "A Nation Forsaken."

WASHINGTON – Armed Neo-Nazi, ultra-nationalist groups stormed the Interior Ministry building of the Kiev government in response to the killing of one of its leaders, and it may be the basis Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to take the western part of Ukraine, according to a report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

These armed ultra-nationalist groups were in the forefront last Feb. 22 in ousting the democratically-elected government of pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych, who since has sought refuge in Russia.

Until now, the mainstream media has all but ignored the fact that the United States has been backing these demonstrators who neither want to join the European Union nor want ethnic Russians in the country, a prospect that has prompted Putin to stage his troops along the country’s border poised to protect them.

Meanwhile, the Germans are using the example of the Nazis in the 1930′s to oppose any more invasions by Putin. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble said there are parallels between Putin’s annexation of Crimea and Adolf Hitler’s 1938 takeover of the Sudetenland.

At the time, Hitler had said that he needed to protect “ethnic Germans” in peripheral regions of what then was Czechoslovakia.

Schauble said that this sentiment is prevalent among his counterparts in other countries of the European Union and said that they intend to increase their military expenditures, although there has been no evidence of that to date.

However, many prominent Germans aren’t so sure they want a confrontation with Russia. There remains disagreement whether the West provoked Putin into action in Crimea or if he was justified in responding to the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into Eastern Europe.

In addition, Europeans appear reluctant to create a further crisis with Moscow given the fragile economic recovery and the high prospect that a confrontation could ignite greater political chaos.

According to informed sources, paramilitary groups are patrolling the streets of Kiev, displaying Nazi insignias and are said to be honoring SS collaborators from World War II, including hoisting white-power symbols and other racist banners.

These ultra-nationalist groups are protesting the killing of one of their leaders, Oleksandr Muzychko. According to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, Muzychko died in a night shoot-out with police in Rivne in western Ukraine.

The confrontation at the Interior Ministry is viewed as significant from the standpoint of a small but heavily armed group ultra-nationalists, especially Right Sektor, which ousted Yanukovych.